1
Comparative Research Paper: Research Design
In our current project, the research design section is the glue connecting your theoretical work to
your empirical work. The reader digested the theory you’re arguing will explain the cases. Now,
we need to know why you picked these cases in particular. In other words, the reader expects
you to justify your case selection. We want to see two types of justifications: related to internal
and external validity.
Internal validity is a fancy name for the following ideas:
 The theory rightly explains the outcomes in your cases, because
 Selecting these cases allows you to rule out potential alternative explanations, and thus
 These cases are good for testing the strength of your theory.
External validity is a fancy name for the following ideas:
 There is something representative about the cases you’ve chosen, meaning
 The logic that explains these cases is likely to explain others, and thus
 These cases are good for developing a theory that can explain even more cases.
So, your comparative paper research design section will include the following components:
1. Presenting the cases and case comparison method.
2. Defending your case selection—how do these cases give you confidence in the internal
validity of your inferences?
3. Justifying the “generalize-ability” of your comparison—how do these cases give you
confidence in the external validity of your inferences?
4. Previewing what kinds of data you’ll use to test the argument in each case.
After doing so, the reader will be pumped to read your empirical section. You’ve just told us
why studying these particular cases gives us greater confidence that you’re really able to narrow
in on the specific variables that influence political outcomes. Plus, we have a sense as to the
additional cases the argument can explain.
With that overview, let’s break down what this section is going to look like. It should end up
being ~2 pages and following this rough outline (one paragraph per component):
1) Identify cases and method
 Mention the cases you are going to study. Give us a sentence for each case, describing the
when, where, and what.
 Identify the method you’ll use to test the theory—the comparative method.
 Mention why the comparative method is a good approach (as opposed to statistical
method, for instance). This helps us transition to discussing internal and external validity.
2) Justify internal validity
2
Your comparative methodology and specific case selection give you confidence in the internal
validity of your results—confidence that you’ve adequately tested the theory and confidence that
your results are valid.
Easiest method for justifying how case selection leads to internal validity of your findings:
 Explain how the cases have much in common, but witness different outcomes.
 If the cases share many of the same variables, you have greater reason to believe that you
are pinpointing the one or two key ways in which they are different, and in doing so
explain the puzzle.
How to put into practice, if you are comparing one country over time:
 You are able to “hold constant” many variables—things that don’t change much over
time in that country.
 If you’re comparing unrest in Syria in the 1980s and unrest in Syria in 2011, you’re able
to “control” for the following factors: the general regime under which the unrest took
place; the geo-political context; demographics; colonial heritage, etc.
How to put into practice, if you are comparing two countries in same region:
 You are able to “hold constant” variables that don’t change much across the region.
 If you’re looking at two countries in the Middle East, you might be able to “control” for
the following factors: Muslim-majority country; colonial past; authoritarian regime, etc.
How to put into practice, if you are comparing two countries in different regions:
 You might have to think harder here.
 What things are similar between these two countries, despite the different regions?
 Think about: nature of their past; political regime; religion; basis of the economy; level of
economic development; main trading partners; experience in a war, etc.
The general idea behind your internal validity justification:
 The cases are similar in ways W, X, Y, and Z.
 Since they are similar in ways W, X, Y, and Z, but witness such different outcomes, W,
X, Y, and Z can’t be what explains the differing outcomes.
 You’ve effectively controlled for factors W, X, Y, and Z and thus are confident in the
internal validity of your inferences.
3) Demarcate external validity
Internal validity was our big concern; if we couldn’t justify that, why would the reader even
continue reading? Who wants to read a paper if the author can’t explain why we should trust how
she tests her theory!?
Now we’re on to external validity, which is like icing on the cake. Internal validity told the
reader should be confident that the author is adequately explaining the paper’s case studies.
3
External validity goes a step forward: Should the reader have confidence that these findings
apply not only to these two cases, but others?
In this paragraph, you want to communicate the following:
 Selecting case A and case B not only ensures the internal validity of my causal analysis,
but also allows us to apply this reasoning to explain more cases.
 I have reason to believe that this argument can be generalized to a broader set of cases,
because my cases are not completely unique.
 Indeed, these cases are representative of a broader group.
 Go on to describe what this broader group is, such as:
o Can we apply your explanation of civil war onset to all cases of civil war? Or, are
your cases only representative of civil wars that start soon after a state’s
independence?
o Can we apply your study of military reactions to domestic unrest to all cases of
unrest? Or, are your cases only representative of domestic unrest in which protestors
are non-violent?
o Can we apply your explanation of terrorism’s causes to all cases of terrorism? Or, are
your cases only representative of “Islamic” terrorism, and thus we should be hesitant
to apply it outside such a group of cases?
Overall: Be realistic about the representativeness of your cases and the extent to which your
logic is likely to apply to a broader set of events—in time, geography, etc. An academic or
policymaking audience needs to know exactly how far to apply your findings.
4) Discuss data to be used
You’ve told us about your comparative method, specific cases, internal validity, and external
validity. Finally, it is nice to give the reader a heads-up with regards to the data you’re able to
use to test the theory in your case studies.
Data sources might include:
 Dissertations
 Manuscripts, articles
 Public opinion data from the case countries/times
 Memoirs, personal publications
 Social media
 Declassified government documents
 Local and international news articles on the events
 Human rights reports
 Government and international statistics